Problem Discription The issues I’m having when I try to load a Django website

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Asked: May 26, 20262026-05-26T04:52:15+00:00 2026-05-26T04:52:15+00:00

Problem Discription The issues I’m having when I try to load a Django website

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Problem Discription

The issues I’m having when I try to load a Django website that’s using
mod_wsgi, python 2.7 and virtualenv, is that I get a 500 error when I go to the site in my browser. When
I look at the error that’s created in my apache log I get the following…

[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226] mod_wsgi (pid=69270): Exception occurred processing WSGI script '/Volumes/Ontario/Sites/emails/config/apache/dev.emails.wenatcheeworld.com.wsgi'.
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226] Traceback (most recent call last):
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]   File "/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg/django/core/handlers/wsgi.py", line 230, in __call__
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]     self.load_middleware()
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]   File "/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg/django/core/handlers/base.py", line 33, in load_middleware
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]     for middleware_path in settings.MIDDLEWARE_CLASSES:
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]   File "/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg/django/utils/functional.py", line 276, in __getattr__
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]     self._setup()
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]   File "/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 40, in _setup
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]     self._wrapped = Settings(settings_module)
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]   File "/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg/django/conf/__init__.py", line 75, in __init__
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226]     raise ImportError("Could not import settings '%s' (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): %s" % (self.SETTINGS_MODULE, e))
[Tue Oct 11 09:32:30 2011] [error] [client 206.130.131.226] ImportError: Could not import settings 'config.settings' (Is it on sys.path? Does it have syntax errors?): No module named config.settings

The traceback doesn’t make sense because the files that are getting loaded are from the global python 2.5 library.

Virtualenv Setup Information

I installed python 2.7 on an OS X Server that’s running OS X 10.5.8. I
installed python using the
Python 2.7.2 Mac OS X 32-bit i386/PPC Installer. The server currently has virtualenv 1.6.4 installed.

I setup my virtualenv using for a new website using the following

$ cd /usr/local/virtualenvs
$ virtualenv --no-site-packages -p /usr/local/bin/python2.7 dev.emails

I then install all the nessary python packages. When I run pip freeze this is my output

$ pip freeze
Django==1.3
PIL==1.1.7
South==0.7.3
amqplib==1.0.2
anyjson==0.3.1
boto==2.0
celery==2.2.7
django-celery==2.2.4
django-compressor==0.9.2
django-grappelli==2.3.4
django-picklefield==0.1.9
feedparser==5.0.1
html2text==3.02
kombu==1.4.1
lxml==2.2.2
psycopg2==2.4.2
pyparsing==1.5.6
python-dateutil==1.5
python-sendgrid==0.2.0dev
redis==2.4.9
requests==0.6.2
wsgiref==0.1.2

Trouble Shooting Steps

I created a script called path_test.py in order to test my virtualenv path…

import os
import sys

# Activate Python Virtual Enviroment
activate_this = '/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/bin/activate_this.py'
execfile(activate_this, dict(__file__=activate_this))

# start django
import django.core.handlers.wsgi
os.environ['DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE'] = 'config.settings'

for p in sys.path:
        print p

application = django.core.handlers.wsgi.WSGIHandler()

When I run the script using python path_test.py I get the following output:

/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.5/site-packages
/Volumes/Ontario/Sites/emails/bin
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/MySQL_python-1.2.2-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/paramiko-1.7.4-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/simplejson-2.0.7-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/python_ldap-2.3.7-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/lxml-2.2.2-py2.5-macosx-10.5-i386.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/pytz-2010h-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/python_openid-2.2.4-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Markdown-2.0.3-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/django_authopenid-1.0.1-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/Django-1.2.1-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/django_profiles-0.2-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/django_openid_consumer-0.1.1-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/ipython-0.10-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/httplib2-0.6.0-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/guess_language-0.2-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/django_ratings-0.3.4-py2.5.egg
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/pip-0.8.1-py2.5.egg
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python25.zip
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-darwin
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-tk
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/lib/python2.5/lib-dynload
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages
/Library/Python/2.5/site-packages/PIL
/System/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.5/Extras/lib/python/PyObjC

If I activate the virtualenv first using source /path/to/virtualenv/bin/activate and then run python path_test.py I get the following output:

/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.0.2-py2.7.egg
/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lxml-2.2.2-py2.7-macosx-10.3-intel.egg
/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages
/usr/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL
/Volumes/Ontario/Sites/emails/bin
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/setuptools-0.6c11-py2.7.egg
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/pip-1.0.2-py2.7.egg
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/lxml-2.2.2-py2.7-macosx-10.3-intel.egg
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python27.zip
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/plat-mac
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/lib-tk
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/lib-old
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/lib-dynload
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-darwin
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/lib-tk
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac
/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/lib/python2.7/plat-mac/lib-scriptpackages
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages
/Volumes/Ontario/local/virtualenvs/dev.emails/lib/python2.7/site-packages/PIL
/Volumes/Ontario/Sites/emails

At this point I’m pretty sure the problem is that activate_this.py in the virtualenv isn’t setting up the correct sys.path.

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1 Answer

Editorial Team · Answer 1 · 2026-05-26T04:52:16+00:00

As I pointed out in my reply to my own question and as others have replied it’s not possible to use different version of python with mod_wsgi. My solution was to install and setup gunicorn for my specific site that needed a different version of python.

First I installed gunicorn…

$ /usr/local/virtualenvs/my.examplesite/bin/activate
$ pip install gunicorn

Then I setup a launchd.plist to run gunicorn in /Library/LaunchDaemons/my.examplesite.com.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
    <dict>
        <key>Label</key><string>my.examplesite.com</string>
        <key>EnvironmentVariables</key>
        <dict>
            <key>DJANGO_SETTINGS_MODULE</key><string>config.settings</string>
        </dict>
        <key>UserName</key><string>_www</string>
        <key>ProgramArguments</key>
        <array>
            <string>/usr/local/virtualenvs/my.examplesite/bin/gunicorn_django</string>
            <string>--bind=127.0.0.1:8001</string>
        </array>
        <key>RunAtLoad</key><true/>
        <key>StandardErrorPath</key><string>/var/log/gunicorn/my.examplesite.com.error.log</string>
        <key>StandardOutPath</key><string>/var/log/gunicorn/my.examplesite.com.access.log</string>
    </dict>
</plist>

Next I setup nginx to server media and proxy to my gunicorn server:

server {

    listen       80;
    server_name  my.examplesite.com;
    access_log   /var/log/nginx/my.examplesite.com.access.log;
    error_log    /var/log/nginx/my.examplesite.com.error.log;

    location = /favicon.ico {
        return  404;
    }

    location  /static/ {
        root  /path/to/site/root/;
    }

    location  /media/ {
        root  /path/to/site/root/;
    }

    location  / {
        proxy_pass            http://127.0.0.1:8001/;
        proxy_redirect        off;
        proxy_set_header      Host             $host;
        proxy_set_header      X-Real-IP        $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header      X-Forwarded-For  $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        client_max_body_size  10m;
    }

}

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Problem Discription The issues I’m having when I try to load a Django website

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